Looking at the Issues: Science and Fiction as Genres in the Fin de Siècle Magazine

One of the more profound effects of the digitisation of periodicals is the eclipse of the ‘issue’ as a unit of study. Keyword searching allows us to create bespoke collections of articles from across a wide range of publications, algorithmically determined to cluster around a single author, event, or idea – all well and good, if a single author, event, or idea is the object of study. In this piece, though, I argue that there is sometimes value in apprehending the whole issue, especially if one is interested in discursive formations of genre.